Mona Kuhn: She Disappeared into Complete Silence

Description

Acclaimed for her contemporary and intimate depictions of the nude, Kuhn takes a new direction into abstraction in her latest series "Acido Dorado." Photographed at a golden modernist structure on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park, architectural lines, light reflections and a single figure have been carefully balanced against the backdrop of the Californian desert. The human figure, Mona's friend and collaborator Jacintha, emerges like a surrealist mirage, fragmented and indistinct, at times submerged in shadows or overexposed. The building's facade of glass and mirrors serve as optical planes, an extension of the artist's camera and lens. Light is split into refracting colors, desert vegetation grows sideways, inside is outside and outside in. Kuhn pushes a certain disorienting effect by introducing metallic foils as an additional surface, at times producing purely abstract results. Acido Dorado marks Kuhn's increasing use of techniques that appear to merge the figure, abstractions and landscape into one. The body is a place where our mind resides, and that's what I'm photographing.

Mona Kuhn is best known for her large-scale, dream-like photographs of the human form. Her pictures often references classical themes with a light and insightful touch. Kuhn's approach to her work is distinguished by the close relationships she develops with her subjects, resulting in images of remarkable naturalness and intimacy, and creating the effect of people who are naked but comfortable in their own skin. Kuhn's Steidl books include Photographs (2004), Evidence (2007), Native (2009) and Bordeaux Series (2011).

In a new publication from Steidl, She Disappeared into Complete Silence, the practitioner takes fresh steps into abstraction. Set against a backdrop of the expansive Californian desert, it taps into our relationship with the environment - connecting interior and exterior worlds through layering and refraction.-- "Aesthetica" Contemporary photographer Mona Kuhn introduces her latest series, the abstract-slanting She Disappeared Into Complete Silence, in which modern architectural lines and the human form mingle against the California desert background.--Marie Look "C Magazine" In She Disappeared into Complete Silence (Steidl), Kuhn takes Paul Nash's Landscape from a Dream (1936-38) as her departure point and delves into the realm of photography to explore the surreal, symbolic realm of the California desert landscape, her model Jacintha, and elements of architecture to organize chaos.--Miss Rosen "Feature Shoot" Kuhn's She Disappeared into Complete Silence proves the artist is a maestra with the lens and a sorceress in the desert; she shrinks Jacintha into glittering nothingness, a mere memory of the female form.--Amy Schatz "Musee" She Disappeared Into Complete Silence is an experimental project shot in Acido Dorado, a reflective house in the middle of the Californian desert designed by American architect Robert Stone. Inside it are mirrored ceilings and walls, which refract sheets of golden desert light that flood the house. Here, Kuhn presents a solitary nude on the edge of the desert, removed from any symbols of time, creating "an abstraction of being," and "a space where our mind resides".--Marigold Warner "British Journal of Photography" Timeless and trippy, the photographs are testimony to the unique effects of the desert environment - a place for deep enquiry and to ruminate on the essence of being human.--Charlotte Jansen "Wallpaper"